Global Maladies, Local in Treatment: “Quality” TV Fiction Formats, Glocal Forms of Prestige, and Cumulative Cross-Cultural Dialogues
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International Journal of Communication 10(2016), 2056–2073 1932–8036/20160005 Global Maladies, Local In Treatment: “Quality” TV Fiction Formats, Glocal Forms of Prestige, and Cumulative Cross-Cultural Dialogues NAHUEL RIBKE1 Kibbutzim College and Tel Aviv University, Israel With the rise of television formats in global television, several studies have examined the economic, political, and cultural aspects of this media product’s production and circulation. This study analyzes the complex path of a television drama series from a local critical and popular phenomenon to a global “quality” fiction format, focusing on the transnationalization process of the format of the Israeli program BeTipul from its arrival in the United States to its adaptation and reception in Canada, Argentina, Brazil, and Italy. The study emphasizes the cross-cultural dialogic attributes of the quality fiction format, which support a strategy comprising both mutual benefits and competition, as opposed to the allegedly “odorless” or “neutral” features of reality and game-show formats. Keywords: television formats, fiction genre, global television, cultural translation, quality television When the television series BeTipul first aired in August 2005, no one expected that a few years later it would be a best-selling television format sold, adapted, and produced in three dozen countries, making the Israeli television industry a world leader in television format exports. A 30-minute daily series filmed in a single location, BeTipul depicts a weekly dialogue between a therapist and his patients. Despite its unorthodox structure, dialogic nature and rhythm, BeTipul quickly won both popular and critical praise. This study analyzes the complex path of this fictional television drama series from localized phenomenon to global quality fiction format. What transnational connections and discursive devices turned BeTipul into an attractive asset for geographically and culturally distant television industries and cultures? How do local adaptations relate to earlier versions produced around the world? How do local producers and audiences interpret the “quality” features of the formats? This study centers on those questions, preceding its findings with the theoretical background on fictional television, global formats, and cultural adaptations. Nahuel Ribke: [email protected] Date submitted: 2015–09–02 1 I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their enlightening comments, as well as Arlene Luck and editorial team of IJoC. Copyright © 2016 (Nahuel Ribke). Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd). Available at http://ijoc.org. International Journal of Communication 10(2016) Global Maladies, Local In Treatment 2057 “Quality” Television, the Global Economy of Formats, and Cultural Adaptation The discursive construction of BeTipul as a “quality television” series stems from two interconnected processes in global television: academic cultural studies work in the field of communication, and a major transformation in the television industry. In the 1980s, scholars began rejecting more textual and ideological approaches to television, instead regarding television contents as more complex constructions containing multiple voices and subject to competing interpretations (Fiske, 2002; Hall, 2010; Morley, 2003). In this period the study of soap operas and telenovelas thrived, labeled by some scholars as sites of everyday resistance and contestation (Ang, 2005; Liebes & Katz, 1993; Tufte, 2000; Vink, 1988). The discursive construction of quality television has been present since U.S. television’s inception, but the 1980s saw a body of television productions sharing several features crystallize into a discernable genre (Thompson, 1997). This decade turned out acclaimed television series such as Hill Street Blues, Twin Peaks, and Thirtysomething, intensifying the distinction between “highbrow”/“quality” and “lowbrow” television. Aesthetic choices like realism and social sensibility, production procedures centered on the author-writer, large production budgets, and “quality demographics” are some key features of the “quality TV” formula (Feuer, Kerr & Vahimagi, 1984; Thompson, 1997). Commercial broadcasting channels produced the aforementioned series, but it was cable television that aimed to capture a more affluent audience and thus fully exploited the notion of quality content. The U.S. premium cable network HBO’s slogan “It’s not television; it’s HBO” is a well-known example of a conscious branding strategy designed to valorize the network’s products by taking advantage of a historically rooted derogatory discourse about the television medium (Leverette, Ott & Buckley, 2009; Lotz, 2014; Santo, 2009). The European television industry, like those of several developing countries, generally associated the concept of quality television with public service broadcasting. However, privatization of the media market and competition with private broadcasters led to a perceived loss of quality in public television (Bourdon, 2004). According to Tamar Liebes (2003), the Israeli media began producing television series in greater quantities in the context of market-opening policies and neoliberal reforms in the 1990s. To avoid a flood of lowbrow or “cheap” television content, the regulatory authority compelled private channels to produce at least 150 hours of quality television content yearly (Bargur, 2011; Lavie, 2015). In practical terms, the Israeli interpretation of quality television incorporates many of the features previously described by Thompson. However, as the Israeli market is relatively peripheral and limited, it emphasizes the value of locally produced television content over cheaper imported formats or canned content (Lavie, 2015; Thompson, 1997). I will later show how HBO’s commercial and aesthetic product orientation contended with the regulated, economically constrained Israeli television content when the U.S. network decided to produce In Treatment, its own version of BeTipul. The process that moved the industry toward television audience fragmentation and creation of the quality television concept in the 1990s also brought the transnationalization of television formats, spurring widespread claims of homogenization of television contents (Bourdon, 2012; Chalaby, 2011; Moran, 1998). Jean Chalaby (2011) described television formats as an inherently transnational cultural product because a “programme becomes a format only when it is adapted outside its country of origin” (p. 2058 Nahuel Ribke International Journal of Communication 10(2016) 295). The global market for formats emerged from a confluence of contradictory forces, such as the transnationalization of media corporations, the globalization of professional knowledge and practices, and regulations created by nations to protect their cultural identities and local industries (Oren & Shahaf, 2012). Silvio Waisbord (2004) observed that the global flow of television formats “responds to programming strategies to bridge transnational economic interests and national sentiments of belonging” (p. 368). According to Iwabuchi (2002) and Chadha and Kavoori (2015), the canned programming that filled the TV schedules of developing nations during the 1960s and 1970s prompted arguments about cultural and media imperialism (Tomlinson, 1991), whereas television formats have been perceived as neutral or odorless in terms of national-cultural identity (Chadha, 2015; Iwabuchi, 2002). However, as McCabe (2013) and Weissmann (2013) sensibly pointed out, producers, broadcasters, and audiences do not experience television formats as tabulae rasae; rather, each such actor approaches a new production with knowledge of earlier format versions produced in other countries, or at least of commentary and other information about the format’s journey across the world. Although television formats are modified to suit local customs, languages, and cultures, some questions explored in this study concern the national-cultural aspects of TV formats: If TV formats are not, as McCabe (2013) and Weissmann (2013) have argued, odorless or neutral, what patterns structure the circulation and reception of television formats? What specific transformations do original texts undergo when transported to other cultures? Albert Moran (1998; 2009a) identified processes analogous to the circulation and translation of television formats in the practice of translating the Bible from Latin to indigenous languages in the 15th and early 16th centuries. This homology between sacred scripts’ and television formats’ translation and diffusion seems to go beyond the textual dimension, penetrating into historically constituted spheres of knowledge and power. The translation of formats is a nonviolent, commercially oriented practice very distinct from the violent, coercive translation and imposition of the Bible on indigenous people, but a similarity lies in the asymmetrical power relations between producing and consuming/purchasing countries. What relationship, then, evolves between the preachers/experts from the producing countries and the indigenous/local labor? What attributes do preachers/format producers need, if believers/network managers are to consider them trustworthy “prophets” of evangelism/ratings? What is the balance of power between preachers/format producers from the periphery and the high church hierarchy/high- ranking managers of international or U.S. entertainment corporations? Television formats are attractive